Balance Druid 7.2.5 Patch notes

[Glurp]

Starfall Character:
Overall iLvl: 922
Relics: 3x 915 Fallnig Star
83% mastery, 18% haste, 19% crit, 4% Vers [Like I said, it's not easy finding strong haste gear and there's a lot of crit floating around]
Legendaries: Soul of the Arch Druid, Oneth's Intuition
Talents: WoE, Stellar Flare, BotA, Stellar Drift [Found WoE to slightly outperform Starlord with this rotation]
APL: Keeps up DoTs and Starfall single target, squeezes in Starsurges with leftover AP.
I found the best results while enchanting for mastery

What was the purpose of using Stellar Flare for the starfall build? I see no reason why you wouldn't take Incarnation. Force of Nature also has outperformed WoE in the past so why not use it here too?

[thedeisel]

It did more damage when I ran it through sims

edit: INC instead of stellar flare came in at 1.035m dps

[Polarthief]

What was the purpose of using Stellar Flare for the starfall build? I see no reason why you wouldn't take Incarnation. Force of Nature also has outperformed WoE in the past so why not use it here too?

Because if you're going to go with 3x Falling Star relics, you might as well take StFl since it'll probs outperform Inc when you use Starfall on ST.

That said, it still performs worse than just using "normal" relics (Starsurge, MF, SF) and running with Incarnation, using Starfall only on 2+ targets, and most people probably aren't going to be getting 3x Stellar Emp relics.

Not to mention the build is not only weaker, but also requires you to use StFl. Yuck.

Now I'm not saying you couldn't do it, you totally could if you enjoy the playstyle, but it's still a tad suboptimal regardless, and I personally cannot stand StFl due to the cast time and using AsP for it.

[thedeisel]

Played around a bit to see if I could get some better looking stats:

could bring down the mastery and crit a bit to buy up to about 20-22% haste for each build but the relative damage between the two stayed the same and the raw damage barely fluctuated at all. So much proc haste floating around with the tier set, claw if enchanted, and the set bonus that it seems like it's not that big a deal to fluctuate just a few haste % from gear.

- - - Updated - - -

Because if you're going to go with 3x Falling Star relics, you might as well take StFl since it'll probs outperform Inc when you use Starfall on ST.

That said, it still performs worse than just using "normal" relics (Starsurge, MF, SF) and running with Incarnation, using Starfall only on 2+ targets, and most people probably aren't going to be getting 3x Stellar Emp relics.

Not to mention the build is not only weaker, but also requires you to use StFl. Yuck.

Now I'm not saying you couldn't do it, you totally could if you enjoy the playstyle, but it's still a tad suboptimal regardless, and I personally cannot stand StFl due to the cast time and using AsP for it.

-It's as easy to get 3x falling star relics as any other relic combo in Tomb. That's because there are both arcane and life Falling Star relics.

-At 2 targets sustained you're slightly better off with Stellar Flare than Inc if you have 3x Falling Star relics or if you have some other combo like 1x Solar Wrath, 1x Sunfire, 1x Falling Star.

Really, the overall point is that in many commonly accessible gearing builds from raiding, you're going to do basically as well as using SotA/OI/StellarFlare on single target damage as you would with ED/IFE/INC. It's more a point about play style freedom and adaptability rather than a point about the absolute theoretical maximum dps. SotA opens up a new competitive single target build.

Within 5% is extremeley close and not very noticeable from a pull to pull perspective. It'll be outweighed by luck on encounters with debuffs, luck from crits, and luck from procs.

Would I expect any bleeding edge moonkin (Top 25 or so world) to be using this build on single target? No. Of course not. But for anyone else, it's very competitive.

Or let me put it another way: if you could do mythic progression as a moonkin in Nighthold, you can do your same level of mythic progression with the Starfall/Stellar Flare/Sota build. The difference on pure single target between the standard build and legendaries for single target and StFl/Sota is smaller than the gap from moonkin to the average ranged spec on single target. That has not been the case yet this expac. That is, you hurt your guild's dps less by going with Sfall/StFL/Sota than you did by just being a moonkin on single target fights in Nighthold. So, if you weren't benched in Nighthold on single target fights for a better performing spec because your guild needed that extra ounce of DPS, you're free to go for the build I suggested. It's basically a pure playstyle preference at this point to go with a traditional starsurge build or a starfall build with sota.

- - - Updated - - -

Let me add one more comparison to illustrate the very small size of the dps difference we're talking about.

Build A:
ED + IFE + Starlord + INC + BotA + NB, Standard SS rotation

Build B:
ED + IFE + Starlord + INC + BotA + Stellar Drift, Standard SS rotation

Build C:
OI + SotA + WoE + StFL + BotA + Stellar Drift, Keep up dots and Starfall


Build A does more damage than Builds B or C. But by the same amount—less than a 5% loss. And it's giving you free cleave with very high mobility. It has less CD based burst but, the flip side, it's more robust across bad encounter debuff luck.

In the past, trying to go for any kind of Starfall based rotation, with or without Stellar Flare, was closer to a 17% loss in single target. Hell, even just dropping INC for Stellar Flare was bigger loss that what we're seeing now.

Another way to think about this besides in terms of playstyle preference flexibility is just in terms of massively reducing the opportunity cost of cleave. What used to be an enormous drop in priority target dps—not just from swapping from Starsurge to Starfall but also from talenting into SotF to fund strong cleave—now shrinks down to under 5%.

[Myztikrice]

How is Build A giving free cleave? Just from Lunar Strikes?

[Deleted]

Or just use the current best spec for movement / single target fights: SL/INC/BotA/SD with OI + IFE.

[turlockmike]

I officially changed main to hunter. I can't deal with this BS anymore.

[Irefusetodie]

I officially changed main to hunter. I can't deal with this BS anymore.

I wish I could main change but every single alt I've made has gotten garbage legiondaries. I don't hate Balance but I can't stand feeling like I'd bring so much more to the raid if I could just mainswap to a rogue or a hunter.

[gobio]

I officially changed main to hunter. I can't deal with this BS anymore.

I have only been asked to sit out of progression fight on 2 bosses :

cenarius from Emerald Nightmare, as guild needs SINGLE TARGET DPS to get to P2
Elisande from Nighthold, as guild needs SINGLE TARGET DPS to get to P2

All my balance druid "amazing" sustained AE DPS were never a critical factor, OMG you #1 on forth boss who cares, those wipes on AE fights are all due to people eating mechanics, not lack of AE damage. At no point that anyone thinks "hmmm if those elemental dies faster, we will win".

Single target dps is the real deal, at least for me. And while sitting on the bench, I want to change class too!

P.S. I may not be the best player or even top perf% player, but I am sure if I play another class that does better base single target dps, I would not be typing this but actually raiding LOL

[Argenon]

So patch notes still only have the 2 changes to starfall & starsurge, plus the change to ED for balance. So when are we gonna get the attention we need? people kept saying wait, once they get to tuning for 7.2.5 we would see more. That hasn't happened. At least elemental shamans were told they were being looked at this patch; we haven't even gotten that.

[Tyze]

Real shame they never really took an effort in buffing/reworking Stellar Flare and Fury of Elune

[huth]

IMO FoE is a lost cause requiring a total rework. The mechanic just doesn't work with the encounter design.

[Argenon]

IMO FoE is a lost cause requiring a total rework. The mechanic just doesn't work with the encounter design.

Just for funsies, make FoE cast on a target and give the caster a buff to move while casting. solved.

[thedeisel]

The problem with making it cast on target is so many boss kinds of mobs have such big hit boxes that you won't be able to cleave with FoE if it's cast on the center of the target. If they make it cast on target they need to make it have a bigger radius. I think they should give it the standard aoe radius anyway, tbh. (8 yds? 7 yds? Whatever bladestorm is.)

Really, the regargeting of the reticule is not so bad anyway so the target part wouldn't be that useful. It's easy enough to reposition it while you're casting it on something else.

The problem with FoE is that it's weaker than Starsurge on single target and it's weaker than Stellar Drift on realisitic multi-target dps, ie cases where targets aren't perfectly stacked on top of each other and show up once every minute or so. On top of that, because of the way that our 4pc works the more Astral Power you dump into FoE, the less benefit you get out of the 4pc. On top of all of all of that, FoE is the only way to spend Astral Power that doesn't interact with our mastery. Starsurge and Starfall do, obviously, but Stellar Flare does as well via it's interaction with Stellar Empowerment. FoE just devalues mastery so much and mastery is (a) abundant on our gear (thanks largely to our weapon and our bis trinket in ToS) and (b) a super strong stat for both our single target and multitarget damage.

They just need to pick a direction to take it. Either it needs to beat Starsurge in single target damage (at least Starsurge without ED) and so the idea of the spell is the longer you can keep it active, the more damage you do with it. That makes it a single target, high skill cap talent choice with Nature's balance as the easy to use passive. It can keep its small radius or even just get attached to the target in that case. Or they need to make it our burst aoe tool. It gets a regular AoE spell radius. In that situation it probably doesn't make sense to have it drain AP and it can just be CD limited and given a fixed duration. Making it an AoE spell with no resource would be nice as well given that it doesn't interact with our mastery.

FoE was pretty damned fun for world content with Astral Communion and Treants before Stellar Drift got buffed in 7.1.5. It's just so pointless now for any content.

[Deleted]

The problem with making it cast on target is so many boss kinds of mobs have such big hit boxes that you won't be able to cleave with FoE if it's cast on the center of the target. If they make it cast on target they need to make it have a bigger radius. I think they should give it the standard aoe radius anyway, tbh. (8 yds? 7 yds? Whatever bladestorm is.)

Really, the regargeting of the reticule is not so bad anyway so the target part wouldn't be that useful. It's easy enough to reposition it while you're casting it on something else.

The problem with FoE is that it's weaker than Starsurge on single target and it's weaker than Stellar Drift on realisitic multi-target dps, ie cases where targets aren't perfectly stacked on top of each other and show up once every minute or so. On top of that, because of the way that our 4pc works the more Astral Power you dump into FoE, the less benefit you get out of the 4pc. On top of all of all of that, FoE is the only way to spend Astral Power that doesn't interact with our mastery. Starsurge and Starfall do, obviously, but Stellar Flare does as well via it's interaction with Stellar Empowerment. FoE just devalues mastery so much and mastery is (a) abundant on our gear (thanks largely to our weapon and our bis trinket in ToS) and (b) a super strong stat for both our single target and multitarget damage.

They just need to pick a direction to take it. Either it needs to beat Starsurge in single target damage (at least Starsurge without ED) and so the idea of the spell is the longer you can keep it active, the more damage you do with it. That makes it a single target, high skill cap talent choice with Nature's balance as the easy to use passive. It can keep its small radius or even just get attached to the target in that case. Or they need to make it our burst aoe tool. It gets a regular AoE spell radius. In that situation it probably doesn't make sense to have it drain AP and it can just be CD limited and given a fixed duration. Making it an AoE spell with no resource would be nice as well given that it doesn't interact with our mastery.

FoE was pretty damned fun for world content with Astral Communion and Treants before Stellar Drift got buffed in 7.1.5. It's just so pointless now for any content.

All that you posted can be implemented/fixed very quickly without any issues...the separation of PvP and PvE templates was supposed to bring regular class balancing which has not happened yet. All we get is some spec changes basically every tier while some specs are ignored for 6+ months. For this patch alone they could do several quick changes to druids that could be done literally in half a day:
A) lower cooldown of prowl to atleast 6 seconds (5 would be appropriate), huge quality of life change that especially ferals have been asking for for ages
B) touch of the moon (that shitty artifact trait that heals you for 5% of your HP every 20 seconds when you get hit): increase healing scaling by atleast 50 % or lower internal cooldown to 15/10 seconds
C) force of nature: every second treants are active they generate 5 astral power per second
D) renewal: reduce cooldown to 75 seconds
E) stellar flare: remove cost to cast it, applies moonfire and sunfire to the target
F) fury of elune: scales with mastery, just for starters, to see where it will take us (devs could also be so magnonimous and fix the tooltip, I think it says dmg every second but its half the damage every 0,5 seconds, or something, is it affected by haste? I dont know, im not that knowledgeable when it comes to these things)
G) Nature´s Balance: casting starsurge on target affected by starfall spreads moonfire to all targets affected by starfall


I just brainfarted this at 3AM in the morning, and atleast A-F could be done literally tomorrow without any major damage done to all those fotm dps specs, one dev could do this in one morning. Nature´s balance is just an idea, honestly I think it should be baseline and replaced by anything else.

[Hellshout]

In a more laid back scenario where players don't push to 100% that StFl with Stellar relics could work nicely. You're just a little behind SS spec, but at that level, the difference won't be as huge as 99%. It also can help with AoE a lot. Our current ST spec lacks major AoE. I'd rather be 5% behind ST but 20% ahead AoE(all in the same fight) with this spec compared to SS spec. We do miss the buff from 2p by not using SS and there is a chance blizz might nerf the spec if it performs as good or better, because they worked so hard to provide us with legos and tier for SS play, not other shenanigans we'd like to try.

/s

[BoomkinHell]

It just seems like the same idiots are on Blizzard's balance team all the way back from Vanilla. They haven't learned jack-all. It's the same problem with different or all classes every expansion. They even took out 80% of the talents and there are STILL plenty of useless ones that they deem viable. One or two classes are super stronk, the rest barely middle, while a few specs get shit on. This is the last major patch and it's going to be the same way that it has been for the past 12 years. There is one small balance patch left with a few minor tunes. GG Boomkins and my 2nd char Monk. I'm glad I got strung along for 3 more subbed months. It's not even about boomkins anymore. Boomkins has had problems for WoW's entire life. Just another mad lad leaving WoW. I'm going to Flap my wings off Dalaran until Fatigue takes me away.

[PowerGamez]

The only way I could see FoE being good is if they made it follow the target it's cast on and it deals a lot more damage. So it would perform kind of like a frost DKs Breath.

[Deleted]

I'm going to Flap my wings off Dalaran until Fatigue takes me away.

This genuinely made me laugh. May your full moons crit good sir.

And I would love FoE to be an option. I remember having some fun in VotW early in the expac, when you know the pulls align with the cooldown it should be able to pull way ahead of starfall but right now it just scales like shit.

[wewe]

Hmm mages have posted simulation results for 7.2.5

Fire, which most people consider one of the worst ST specs in the game going into 7.2.5, is simming 1,198,850 with 2 970 legos, one 940 ring and other pieces being 930.
Now the simulation Slippy did for Boomies was with 935 gear if I'm not mistaken and 970 legendaries and our best outcome is 1,248,890. The difference being ~50k but our sim is with ~5 ilvl higher !? That is a tad bit worrisome.

As a disclaimer tho the fire mage set does include the Owl trinket which I have no idea if our sim does or not, and that can make a significant difference (so can the different sim settings but the mage settings were pretty straight forward ST settings). On the flip side our sim relies on 925 Whispers which the Fire set doesn't use and uses a much more obtainable ToS trinket.

p.s We are on par with Arcane and almost 200k below Frost ... So I'm really hoping our sims didn't include the Owl trinket an they are Fury warrior DoS level op, else we aren't looking that great for ST.